George Bush Makes Friends with Facebook Founder in Live Chat

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DALLAS - NOVEMBER 09: Former U.S. President George W. Bush waves while signing copies of his new memoir "Decision Points" at Borders Books on November 9, 2010 in Dallas, Texas. Hundreds of people lined up, starting Monday night, for the chance to purchase signed copies of "Decision Points" at the North Dallas bookstore. (Photo by Tom Pennington/Getty Images) *** Local Caption *** George W. Bush

Updated at 8:14 AM CDT on Tuesday, Nov 30, 2010

When you're out trying to sell a new book, there's no better marketing strategy than making nice with a guy who has 500 million friends.

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The interview, which was conducted in the San Francisco/Bay Area and streamed live on Facebook and watched by 7,000 viewers on November 29, featured Bush in playful mood, noting that he thought that the social media giant was an "interesting" company. He also stated that, "I use the Facebook."

"I've got over 600,000 friends on my Facebook page," Bush said, before adding that he did the interview because Zuckerberg has "a lot of people paying attention to us, and I'm trying to sell books."

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"The truth of the matter is, I'm shamelessly marketing," he said to great laughter from the audience. "I hope people read my book. I've written this book because I recognize there's no such thing as accurate short-term history. I want to give future historians a perspective - mine."

Bush tried to remain above the current political fray, but did weigh in on the new document dump by WikiLeaks, an organization that released over 250,000 confidential U.S. government cables that contained sensitive - and sometimes embarrassing - details about the conduct of the nation's foreign policy.

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"Leaks are very damaging and people who leak ought to be prosecuted," he said. "I think it's going to be hard to keep the trust of foreign leaders."

But overall the mood was light. Bush commented that since leaving D.C. he's become enamored with his iPad, though he was a "Blackberry person" when inside the Beltway. He said he didn't really use his iPod to listen to music when out mountain biking anymore, though, because he liked to "hear the birds."

However, he then jokingly added, "That's not true. I've got Decision Points on my iPod. "

The interview even caught Bush doing something that was probably once considered unthinkable: engaging in a fist bump with Facebook's whiz kid.